KQ game

There is one major thing that puzzles me about this, with all the effort that went into making the whole thing, why would you map one key to two different functions. Just because you call one ESC and the other Escape, there is no "Escape" key on a standard 101 keyboard. It is just odd. The "Enter" key is used for in game menu and that seems to be missing in the documentation. I suppose the game has some cult knowledge inherent in its creation.

It never ceases to amaze me how much good work is done by the FOSS community. I happened on the game called KQ and it is very interesting and the source is available at sourceforge. It will be interesting to see what is inside the game source code. It seems to run well and it could have more features, but it is a great game for children and young adults.

ADDED: Of course I got into the source! I saw a comment on the web that was interesting as they wanted cheat codes for the game. It isn't that difficult to "svn co" the source or download the zip and unpack it and then cd to it and do "./configure" ( install the dependent .devs and then "./configure" again and then "make" and then on Ubuntu "sudo make install". If you mod the source you have to make and install again. It is all straight "c" code with no headers and looks like a lot of effort was put into making it. I find it boring, but it is the kind of game my daughters used to like.

ADDED MORE: In the process of looking into the game I discovered "lua" ( meaning moon in the language of the programmers ) scripting and have a handle on that. I am probably going to look into how sound is generated and do a little experimenting with zynsubfx and other audio to generate some background music. It seems to be in ".mod" (amiga format ( wiki ref .mod)) and ".s3m" and ".xm"

ADDED EVEN MORE: I wondered why the game had no exit function and would not close. I know, if the point is to create a game that will keep children busy for the duration of a car trip, then you don't want to have a way for them to escape. In the code there is a key combination exit and some other key combos, including F12 for a screen shot ( which are saved in the 'hidden' ".kq" directory as ".pcx" format files .

EXAMPLE::

It is odd that it lacks proper documentation in the way most games should for Linux, however it does serve as a 'pointless time sucking vampire', if you need that sort of thing. Sometimes a little mindless entertainment is necessary. The game seems to be decently structured , but is in no way a work of art in design. It seems that it was designed ad hoc

ADDED even even more: It seems that there is more to the package than meets the eye. I tried "mapdraw coliseum.map" and got the image posted here. Very interesting and good extras for the game to make it extensible, but it is virtually hidden. In the game "sauerbraten" it is directly on a menu and you know that you can edit levels and features. The debug and design is integrated in the game. It could be that I am just jaded by it.

Lots of interesting things to learn with this game and I still have not looked into the sound features.